Archive for the ‘Tugging the Forelock’ Category

Lords and Ladies of Austerity from the G 8 – Obama of the USA; Cameron of Britain; Merkel of Germany; Lagarde of the International Monetary Fund; assorted other “Masters of the Universe”: all heading for the “dreary steeples” of Fermanagh in July 2013. The local police have promised to have extra prison cells ready for protestors. Politicians practice the ancient Irish art of “tugging the forelock” – Gerry Adams leads the way!

http://sovietgoonboy.wordpress.com/2013/03/20/the-bureaucratic-imperative/ This writer hits the spot, big-time. There are really-existing bureaucratically-deformed trotskyist parties put under the microscope here; a sub-category of the bureaucratically-deformed states that crashed in the late 1980’s perhaps? The option of a constitutionally guaranteed right to faction and tendency organisation deserves attention. All part of the continuing fight for new broad-based anti-capitalist parties.

There was a frisson of hope and defiance yesterday afternoon when RTE produced the report below on its website.

Was the Government or at least the Labour Party component, without which the Coalition will fall, changing tack in its dealings with the ECB, would unilateral action be on the table after all unless there was some movement on the part of the ECB, has the Government received tacit approval for a plan which it was sure it could deliver?

Sadly for those who waited up until 11pm last night to see The Week In Politics and the full interview and its context – available on RTE’s player here from 24:40 – it seems that nothing has changed. The Labour Minister for Communications Energy and Natural Resources, Pat Rabbitte said that the €3.1bn payment that fell due in 2012 had not been paid. And he indeed did say that the payment…

– The crisis is caused by the preventable death of Savita Halappanavar – 20 TD’s voted for Clare Daly TD’s Bill to implement the X Case Judgment – 111 Members of the Leinster House Parliament – mainly Fine Gael and Labour Government Deputies – voted against – Read the rest of this entry »

The Fall of the Seán Quinn Family Empire has angered many people in the bankrupt billionaire’s home county of Fermanagh and its near-neighbour Cavan, where a demonstration of over 4000 people assembled in Ballyconnell on Sunday July 29.

Even Sinn Fein MP Michelle Gildernew has come out to defend the family, telling this newspaper that what has happened to Mr. Quinn was “wrong”.

“He has been treated disgracefully by the Irish Government. Had they not tried to strip him off all his assets, including his home, deny him the ability to function in business, and routinely try to humiliate him I believe he would have paid back every penny he owed to the Irish taxpayer.

“He accepted he had done wrong, but all our attempts to make the government show some comment sense were ignored. He is being punished for having the audacity to ‘buy the bank; and for being an ordinary man from Fermanagh who is hugely respected by his community,” she said.

The support hasn’t gone unnoticed by the Quinns who say they will be “forever grateful” to everyone in both Fermanagh and Cavan “who have stood by us as they have been doing for nearly 40 years now”.

Ireland has a mature parliamentary democracy, it has an independent media, we don’t depend on a single commodity like bananas for our wealth, we are judged internationally to be a relatively honest and corruption-free country. Events last week have undermined these perceptions, namely the publication of the Mahon report on political corruption in zoning and planning, but the past 24 hours has been even more damning with a major financial transaction involving billions of euro in a country with a GDP of €160bn getting a few minutes in the national parliament, confined to a statement which brooked no subsequent questioning and where phone-calls to the Department of Finance apparently went unanswered. And politicians have now gone on holidays for three weeks. Never mind, we can fall back on our “independent media” to analyse what happened yesterday and here are the headlines from our main national media outlets today:

But Enda won’t get any ear-grabs for letting down the big people – a much more serious mistake!

Article 27 and the Independent TDs

A group of Independent TDs who want Europe’s new fiscal treaty put to a referendum will seek to use a little known constitutional provision to petition the President to do so, it has emerged.
Under Article 27 of the Constitution, a Bill can be referred to a referendum if requested by at least one third of the Dáil, and a majority of the Seanad.
Donegal South West TD Thomas Pringle said he was “hopeful of achieving that requirement.”